Jesus Christ Was an Only Child
by infamouslastwords
Summary: Eventual slash, takes place one year after the events at the Leisureplex. He thought things would be different-no longer alone. Funny how the future works itself out.
1. Chapter 1

**Jesus Christ Was an Only Child  
by** infamous_last_**words**

**Chapter One | **Now

"Malachy."

The knuckles that have taken to his door wake him.

"Malachy, what did I tell you about locking this?"

His mother. He reaches up to grip his headboard tightly before rolling over.

"Don't do it, I said. Malachy!"

"Mum!" It's muffled. Dawn tries to reach him through the blinds, falters through layers of sheets and a forearm. He breathes and waits for her reply.

There's a shuffle and sigh. "Get up. You'll be late for your service work."

Footsteps sounding down the stairwell. On the twin bed, he swings his legs over the side and stands. In through mouth, out through nose.

There's a half-full pack of cigarettes in the pocket of his jeans when he pulls them on, and keen to the fact his mum won't be making him breakfast he tamps them down and lights one.

His dad's in the hall by the front door when he hops down the landing, orange suit packed in an old gym bag. The routine has been the same for the past year—200 hours of community service under the ASBO army while going through A-levels. A year without mates or the Lifeboat or sex; his parents treating him like a dog they hadn't managed to housebreak but still had emasculated. His father's stare and silent nod follow suit to this feeling of Malachy's, hands unconsciously clenching around letters from the box.

Walking down the street he didn't have refuge, either. The papers took care of whatever anonymity he had moments before the incident by plastering his face along with the two others' every chance it got for the six months following. They were blamed for the malfunction of 'regeneration' within the greater Belfast area, and any discussion of the bullshit philosophy afterwards unfailingly mentioned what had happened at the leisureplex—and the full names of those involved. The community now regards him as some shade of a drug-psychotic scapegoat upon which to place the blame for faults of their own sons and daughters upon.

And even worse, he is alone.

Michelle, with no family left in Ireland, was deported to London where she, Malachy assumes, was reunited with her mother. He can only guess on what terms she had been living at her Majesty's leisure, but knows they can be no shoddier than the things he's had nightmares about concerning Luke.

Detention for a year can change people, juvenile or not. If a blond-haired bird could shake the foundations of their friendship so completely, what of an October-to-October run in jail? Malachy can't stand the moments that seem to trip over themselves when he's stuck-on, staring at his ceiling at night, wondering how in the hell a kid like Luke could survive for that long in a place like that. There are a lot of things he thinks about, a lot of things he can't seem to scratch from his mind, but the single phantasm of Luke wrapped up behind bars, his skinny legs folded into himself in some cell block during break, the guilt of not being able to wash the blood from his hands… Malachy knows this guilt, because he feels it when he passes by the detention center on his way to service and hasn't the heart to go in, because it is him who put Luke inside its walls.

He changes into his jumpsuit in the community center and takes the bucket of nails waiting for him from the bench. Outside and a ways back there is a structure he and the others have been working on, a functioning shed for the regeneration efforts. There was only so much spray paint to wipe from the façade of the Titanic.

No one speaks to each other inside of his service group. Heads down and comments kept to themselves, they work. Malachy's the only one who has been long-term—the others change out, new names and new faces that he forgets seconds after their introductions. They don't care; somewhere, deep down, Malachy realizes that he has begun to not care, either.

And he used to be such a good boy.

While positioning a support beam Malachy finds himself thinking again of that weekend. With only four more hours to serve after this one, at seventeen and a half years old, the thought of what he's been doing with his life sideswipes him. How volatile this town had and has the potential of being again. How volatile he has the potential of being. What kind of person he is. He's not one of _these_, 'paying back' the community; but that big drawn line in the sand starts to disappear with so many possibilities toeing it as of late. He's worried, knowing the extent now to which circumstances out of control can forever affect the future.

He holds the form out for his officer to sign, changes, and begins to walk back.

Two roads exist leading from the community center—one of which, the more secluded one, Malachy only recognizes on his way from service. He usually prefers the shaded path as opposed to the other, and took it frequently during the summer. This almost makes an excuse to why he'd chose one over the other; its selling point is that it circumnavigates the detention center he's so keen to avoid, even in his thoughts. He feels shame under the shade of those leaves when he decides one over the other, and especially today. The burden of knowledge hounds him like some dog in heat, bearing down upon his shoulders, back. The October air burns crisp through his nostrils, mixed with the cigarette he lights to keep anxiety from biting at his temples. Rationally, it's best to take this path. Leave some breathing room. Leave some space.

Feeling thoroughly a coward, Malachy flicks his butt on the stoop and softly closes the door once inside. He leans his shoulder to it, listening for his mother's presence with shallow breaths.

"Not here," he murmurs, taking the gym bag strap from across his chest to toss it limply into a chair at the table. He washes his hands slowly, looks for food in the pantry but can't manage to find an appetite. His mind on A-levels later that afternoon, he goes upstairs to take a nap but resolves that just laying there and numbing himself would be alright.

As long as there's space, for a while.

Two black-clad legs are crossed over the covers of his bed when he reaches the landing, marble pale feet at the end of them. There had been trainers set out by the stairs, he realizes now; flat trainers with yellow socks shoved down in the toes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Jesus Christ Was an Only Child**

**by** infamous_last_**words**

**Chapter Two**

Malachy stares at two eyes under dark eyebrows, lidded and shadowed; hair cropped close to the scalp, jaw set and defined, looking properly out-of-place in the same clothes he had disappeared in a year ago to the day. Malachy sees the padlock and key necklaces around his neck on their separate chains—over his shoulder, the drawers of his desk are dislodged and upturned.

"You're wearing…." He motions to his chest, immediately regretting breaking the silence. Luke still regards him, a small flash of defiance sharpening his features.

"Yeah, why aren't you?"

Hand on the doorknob, he thinks of the things he could say. All of them escape in one rush of an exhale.

"Luke. I tried," leaning into it. "I did. And then I just couldn't, anymore."

"Is that so?" His arms are crossed, tones chiming damper than what Malachy remembers. Everything seems more sodden than what he remembers. "Tried what, exactly."

"I," but falters. Those eyes are suddenly back, the body attached to them lying in his bed the same way it had been, he had been… "I don't know," truthfully. "But I tried."

Luke is completely still on top of the mattress. Malachy has never seen him sit tight so long during words, the action jarring. It frightens him.

"Luke," and there is no meaning behind the name. There are no connotations for Luke's jittery fingers to coil and convert, no shaking knees to relieve feeling. The old energy is either gone or dormant, hiding behind flat black eyes under flat black brows with flat black buzz cropped so close it's alien. "I'm a tampon." He walks close, just as close, reaches out. No more space.

Luke snatches the chain away when Malachy's fingers work at the clasp. The ex-convict stands, one fluid motion jangling metal and bones alike. He looks down his cheekbones at Malachy, breathing through his nose, front to front.

"Why d'you want it now, Mal?"

Malachy ignores this and tries again, but Luke swings the charms so they thump hollowly behind his back, between two shoulder blades.

"Because I'm back?"

Malachy's eyes get hard. He snarls, "Because you were gone."

Luke blinks; their bare feet are touching sides. Slowly, he reaches up behind his neck and brings the padlock in front from above his head. He holds it out for Malachy by the separated clasp halves.

"I was gone," he says. Malachy takes the two halves and makes them one, holding the chain tight in his hand. "Where's my warm fucking welcome?"

They stretch out their arms and embrace like brothers. It's short, but Malachy can feel the empty space between Luke's shoulder blades where his t-shirt sinks down to meet spine. The barrenness of his body worries Malachy; he realizes now his friend had almost disappeared. He might not know how half-gone the old other already is.

Throwing himself back down on the bed, Luke flips onto his stomach. Hands propping up his chin he asks, "So, what're we up to?"

Malachy watches feet kick back and forth in the air. "Well, I've got A-levels."

Luke's movements falter, and he rolls his eyes slightly before turning onto his back. Malachy moves to start picking up his desk drawers where important revision papers lay scattered, getting used to the weight of the charm against his chest. As he bends, it keeps in line with the floor like some anchor, like some leaden reminder. He remembers why he stopped wearing it.

"Fine. We can do whatever later," Luke sighs, examining the beds of his nails in the light coming through the high window. "Did the Titanic get boarded up?"

"Not exactly…" Malachy stops to watch his friend again. "But, do you really want to go back there, man?"

Shoulders shrug. "Yeah, why not."

Malachy bites his cheek, entertaining the idea of lighting another cigarette if the pack weren't in his gym bag downstairs. "I dunno, I haven't been into much of that. Gotten out of the habit, I guess. With my ASBO and A-levels, I haven't been into much of anything lately."

Luke laughs. "It's like riding a bike, yeah. Easy to pick back up again. I have faith in your ability."

"It's just—" Malachy shoves his hands into his jeans, then goes over to his window to open it. He busies himself so he doesn't have to look at the eyes of the phantasm on the bed, a shadow of himself but himself nonetheless. "I wasn't expecting you to want to get involved in all of that again. I thought you'd want to get on a track, or something, you know like choose a school and—"

"And what, get stellar marks like I used to?" he comments, derisive.

"But you could try again. I mean…" Malachy stops. "Chris is gone, Luke."

Something happens in the way Luke looks out from behind black eyes; Malachy sees them upside down, full of malice and mirth for some frightening fraction of a second. It hits him now, fully, that Luke is back, but not as he was before. Clothes the same, mind different; struggling past the quicksand past he had to drag himself—is still dragging himself—through. Some survival evil running through his veins.

"Stop talking about the future, man."

Quietly, "Okay, I'm sorry."

Time regurgitates itself and the look is gone. Nerves normal, Luke shifts his gaze back to something, nothing, non-threatening. Malachy still feels the tightness in him like a clenched fist.

After a minute, Luke starts to check the messages on his phone with an absent hand. "Anyway, have you heard from Michelle?"


	3. Chapter 3

Jesus Christ Was an Only Child  
by infamous_last_**words**

Chapter Three

Underneath red and green lights, everyone's face looks sick-tinged—Malachy sweeps his eyes across the club, coddling the quickly warming beer in his fist. Without the shots of whiskey Luke had fed him before they arrived, he wouldn't be able to stand the gyrations of the music and bodies swarmed around him; with it, he is only slightly annoyed but unable to unlatch himself from the sturdy wood of the bar to do anything except shift his weight from leg to leg.

This night bears no resemblance to the coke-fueled, credit-card pocketed misadventures previously summoned from somewhere behind Luke's half drugs-fried brain stem, Malachy latching alongside for the ride. Instead he took backseat as the recently-released approached a group of girls, too young to be in the club but old enough to find one amongst them brave enough to move closer to Luke on the dance floor, wrapping her fingers into his belt loops. Malachy sees the key charm bounce up and down against Luke's chest as the ex-convict moves in time to the music, the pair of slim hips grinding against his own. His cheeks are completely hollow in the changing lights, smile somewhat haunting as he leans down to tuck hair behind the girl's ear, leaning closer, lips moving in a whisper.

"I have to revise for tomorrow," Malachy had protested, biting back the burn that came with the shot sliding down his throat. Luke laughed madly, clutching the bottle's neck in his hand. Half was gone by his own doing.

"Okay, okay—okay. Just one more, sunshine."

Luke's shining eyes meet his from across the room. The strange smile cuts deeper into his skin, smirk-like, as thin, veined arms pull the relatively younger body closer. Losing him again as the crowd of dancers shifts, Malachy shakes the image from his mind and finishes his beer, turning to flag down the tender.

"Vodka shot," he calls over the noise, to which the young man working nods darkly. Malachy catches it as it slides toward him, taking no time knocking it back. Right as the stinging warmth pools into the bread-y feeling of the beer in his gut, he's surprised by the presence of Luke and the girl when he turns around.

"Mal," Luke starts, "China 'ere has got something that gives her her name, catch me?"

Coyly the girl shifts slightly on the spot, angling her face downward so she has to look up through thick, false lashes to meet Malachy's eyes. Her hands clasped together in front of her force her arms close to her breasts, breasts closer than the push-up already makes them.

"Wanna sample?" she asks.

Luke looks at her hungrily, though his voice hasn't soaked up the sex coursing through his body yet. He simply sounds surprised, saying, "What a peach she is," as though he were her cousin, once-removed. The double-negative makes Malachy falter.

"Luke, you're forgetting that I've got somewhere to be tomorrow besides shit-faced upon waking, still gurning in the gutter," he says, eyes slitting. "I'm paying for our drinks and then going back to mine. Come if you want," he adds, turning back toward the bartender as he reaches for the wallet in his back pocket—he knew this was how the night would turn up; if only he just hadn't assented—when a sudden steel grip around his wrist stops him.

With one hand Luke pushes China back into the sea of bodies, away from them, and uses Malachy's own self-defense mechanism of drawing his hand closer to his body to his advantage. Still holding on to the other's wrist, Luke steps forward and presses himself cleanly against Malachy's body, seemingly zip-sealing them. He dips his head like a bird, slowly, to speak straight into the ear there.

"I miss us, Mal." The voice is so small, but the body attached to it so domineering. Despite having thirty pounds on his friend, Malachy can't top the extra inches that Luke is lording over him. "Come away, play for a bit. Tomorrow is still going to be there when we get back."

Malachy feels the charm key's teeth digging into the skin of his forearm.

"Plus," Luke continues, "I've got nowhere to stay. Be more sensitive than that throw-away offer, mate. We're talking coke here that I've sniffed out." Malachy can hear the smirk starting, lips pulling back over teeth. "Remember what it's like to fuck, wiping the white off your upper lip?"

A cold sweat breaks out over Malachy and shivers race up his spine; at this, he pushes Luke from him lightly, the other's hand still holding on slightly so eyes have a chance to match up as equals.

"Have her after me, if you'd like," eyes two sparks, and Malachy doesn't believe it at first. "Or we can take our turns."

The smirk remains, shining.

* * *

"What d'you mean, have I heard from Michelle?"

Luke sits up, wrapping his thin legs into a pretzel on Malachy's bedspread. He snaps his flip-phone phone shut, pocketing it incredulously.

"I mean, I bludgeoned her Da with a pool net, and I've been in the clink, so that's not exactly grounds for a conjugal. Has she called you? Do you know what happened to her?"

Malachy has to take a seat, pulling the wooden chair underneath his bending body before he slumps onto it numbly. He runs a hand through his hair. "Ah… right. She got deported back to London, she's living with her Ma."

"Any kind of ASBO?"

Luke's fingers are threading between his toes as he speaks, eyes glued on Malachy. He stares back—"I dunno, Luke."

"You didn't ask her?"

"I didn't _talk_ to her," Malachy warns, head feeling light. He hasn't spoken to anyone about this, about her—not his parents, not the fellow delinquents in his service group, not the psychiatrist the government assigned to his case. Everyone seemed to be too aware of the Pandora's Box this girl was; it had all started and ended with her. And here Luke was with his fucking fingers, prying at the edges of some old evil gone unopened, within the first twenty minutes of his return. It had taken so long to forget, so much work to repress.

"D'you think her number's still the same?" Luke asks, flipping open his phone again and searching through the contacts. "I'm gonna try it."

* * *

They walk away through the night, breath trailing in smoke signals behind them. Luke throws his arm out and shoots Malachy a "Watch this," before holding his phone to his ear. Far-off, a ringtone sounds.

"Hello?" heard through the phone and through the air, an off-kilter echo.

"Just checking," Luke laughs, hanging up abruptly. From behind them they hear China shout "Luke!" the way a ten year old might scold a kitten, but they were already off again, walking back to Malachy's.

They snuck through his window, getting scrapes from the garden wall and the metal frame around panes of glass. Luke hisses low, holding the crook of his arm close and his back stiff against the wall, but Malachy shushes him as he slowly closes the window. Walking over to his bed, he watches as Luke suddenly brightens up.

"Wait, wait—what would your parents do if they knew I was here? Oh fuck," he sniffs, tweaks slightly, and then moves from the floor in a tangle of limbs not unlike a spider's. The shadows he casts as he walks around the room are unnerving—he stops at the door, listening into the silent night. "They'd fucking freak!" a hysterical half-whisper, complimented by wide eyes.

Malachy grabs Luke as he walks by again, pulling him to the mattress and motioning for him to take off his shoes. He gets up to grab a spare pair of pajamas, throwing them back next to Luke on the bed. He slowly strips off his clothes, feeling the fading end of being drunk—he had only watched in the bathroom earlier, not partaking as eyes rolled back and gums were rubbed red. Luke had slapped him on the arm with the credit card like some plastic spoon before sliding it into his back pocket—it falls out as he shakes his jeans from around his legs and pulls a pair of sweatpants over them.

Luke's staring at him strangely as he turns around, bare of everything except for those black jeans. In the dimness he sees scars running over the other's pale chest; scabbed cigarette burns, brown and ugly, to marks made unprofessionally—a tiny, blue ink star right in the hollow between two ribs.

Luke has looked away by the time Malachy realizes his eyes had lingered too long, a thin arm wrapping around his own waist. "I'm fine in my jeans," he says, voice hard.

"My Ma doesn't come in in the mornings, usually."

Luke nods slightly, once. "Okay."

Malachy bunches his jeans into a lump and arranges himself on the floor, head resting on the more worn part of the thigh fabric. "Goodnight, then—"

"Mal?"

Malachy sees him tweak again.

"I can't sleep now, Mal."

Letting a slow breath out, Malachy starts, "Luke, you know I've got A-levels—"

Luke throws himself back onto the mattress, hands going to his head and his face and his chest, itching out of frustration. "I know, okay. Fucking hell. I should've just gone with China after you turned her down. I shouldn't have let you drag me along with you."

Malachy snorts. "I didn't fucking drag you anywhere; call her for all I care."

Luke lets out a groan. "Oh, god…" Malachy can tell this isn't the problem, that Luke doesn't care that much—just something to occupy his harried hands with besides the dark room. He sighs, watching Luke's toes dangle against the floor of his room.

"It could've been—really fucking—good," the ex-convict jerks out, over the sound of fabric friction. He's sliding, Malachy can tell, his palm is over his crotch. His jaw sets.

"Watching her—squirm—on your—lap while my cock was—in her—mouth; fuck," he moans. "I haven't skullfucked a bird—for so—fucking—long."

"Luke," Malachy finally manages, a strangled sound that his mouth does not recognize. The other stops abruptly, as if coming-to from a dream about missing the landing step on a staircase. He lets out a small sound of surprise, or perhaps disgust, before rolling over on the bed and out of Malachy's line of vision.

* * *

"Luke," Malachy stammers, watching as his friend selects the number and holds the cell phone to his ear with a strange smile in his direction. Without thinking he jumps over to where Luke is on the bed, knocking the phone out of his hand. His shin is against Luke's thigh, fist full of the wrist he'd stopped. He looks down, and Luke is still smiling up at him as they both hear the sound of a woman's automated voice claiming disconnection.

"Wanna see what's going on in town?"


End file.
